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The Motor Dream story involves a Mill, Stable, Inn, Smokehouse, Cooperage, and a Bridge.

Motor was platted in 1867 with a Mill as the focal point. In early days of settlement settlers dreamed big and this dream involved three elements: the Turkey River, a limestone area, and available timber.

The Stable originally was intended to house horses and wagons of guests staying in the Inn nearby. The gambrel roof was added when it became a dairy barn about 1940. It was used as a dairy barn until 1983, when the site was acquired by the Clayton County Conservation Board. The Stable is being remodeled into a community gathering space.

The Inn (above) once provided rooms and meals to farmers who waited for their grain to be milled. It also served as a home for several farm families and now is being renovated as a Welcome Center with rooms for rent.

The six-story Mill was where farmers in the area brought their grain to be milled, powered by turbines turned by water from the Turkey River, which ran through the Mill on the basement level.

Only a hundred feet from the Mill was the Cooperage (above) where barrels were made that were used to store and ship the flour and cornmeal produced in the Mill. The barrels were made of staves of white oak from the nearby forest.

The Smokehouse, the last building constructed, was used to cure meat. It also may have served as an icehouse.

In 1899 a steel Bridge was constructed over the Turkey River that replaced the original wood-sided bridge built in 1868. This Bridge was necessary for farmers to bring their grain across the river to the Mill. One span was washed out during the flood of 1991, and it was totally destroyed in the flood of 2008. A replica, built in 2012, made the historic site again complete.

The town of Motor never materialized and the Motor Mill only operated for a few years. However, its history and its buildings live on and merit a prominent place in the history of Clayton County. The Motor Mill Historic Site is located at 23002 Grain Road, Elkader. www.motormill.org

The Motor Mill Historic Site is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is preserved and protected by the Clayton County Conservation Board and Motor Mill Foundation at 29862 Osborne Road, Elkader 52043. (2023 photos) 

(Thanks to Larry and Margaret Stone for updates.)

Blog #2, sent in July 2020, featured this barn. However, many persons have been added to the list since I began writing this blog over three years ago. The subject matter is the same but the excitement regarding this barn hasn’t diminished and new discoveries continue to be made.  

This photo was taken in 2014 in Allamakee County in the Paint Creek Valley area. It didn’t look like there was much hope for saving the barn as it had sat empty for many years. However, a new owner decided it was worth saving.

Kudos to the owners for restoring this 1906 barn in recent years. It is a bank barn with the entrance to the loft located on the back side. Major renovations included a new concrete foundation and new concrete floor inside, addition of four double doors, replacement of a few boards and windows, a new steel roof, and paint. It is now used for storage of equipment. The antiques on display were found hidden in weeds around the barn. (2021 photo)

Thirty-seven people were standing on the framework of the barn in the photo below. This day was truly a day to remember, as the itinerant photographer documented this momentous event in the family’s life. More of the story and this photo can be found on page 13 in Iowa Barns yesterday and today.

Wanted! The owners would like to give the log building next to the barn to anyone willing to dismantle it, take it, and restore it for his/her own use. The smallest building is gone. If a reader is interested, please contact me via email to discuss this possibility.

Grain bins everywhere are being transformed into homes. In Allamakee County, this one has been converted as the Kelly’s weekend getaway.

They restored a barn nearby, built in 1906, and this grain bin is their latest project. It has a spacious kitchen and sitting area (See photo below.), two bedrooms, bathroom, novel storage areas, washer and dryer, deck, and an attached grain bin garage. It also has a new roof installed over the original roof, with a layer of insulation between the two. (2023 photos)

This red clay tile barn in southeast Iowa’s Van Buren County was the home of dairy cows when it was built in 1918. The stalls were situated around the perimeter and hay was stored in the loft. Brothers Warren and Clarence Brown built identical barns three miles apart near Stockport, Clarence’s was built in 1921. Note the abundance of windows on the south side that provided natural light for the cows.

After it was not used as a dairy barn, boxes for laying hens were constructed on the north side. Hens had the barn for themselves when they were not in a box laying eggs. The barn is not in use today.

Who built this 40 x 72-foot barn in Dubuque County? Would you believe it was a 16-year-old, the first of 12 barns this young man built in this area? Who had it built? Jack Smith’s grandfather, who was 66 years old at the time.

The barn was built in 1917 using white oak trees from the Smith farm for the framing and fir for the rest. With a height of 42 feet, the loft can store tons of hay and straw for livestock, and it still does.

Since 1853, which was not long after Iowa became a state, six generations have lived on this farm. An interesting note is that Horatio Sanford, a government land agent in Dubuque, bought tracts from settlers who changed their plans, and then re-sold them for a profit. This is one he re-sold to Jack’s grandfather, starting the Smith tradition, with Jack and Anna Smith being the current owners. A unique barn feature is flowers in the windows. How many barns in Iowa have flowers in windows? Very few. Note that this one has real flowers in three of the lower-level windows.

The modern history of threshing grain began with John Froelich, a 43-old farmer in the tiny Clayton County village of Froelich.

John Froelich, looking for ways to make farming more efficient, invented a new one-cylinder gasoline engine. Connected to a threshing machine, it was used to thresh 72,000 bushels of small grain in the fields of South Dakota in 1892. It was also the first gasoline-powered engine that had both forward and reverse gears.

Previously, steam-powered engines were used which weren’t very efficient, were polluting, were heavy to transport long distances, and sometimes resulted in fires that destroyed the crop they were harvesting. What an improvement this new engine was! Pictured above is a photo of the original engine used in the harvest, courtesy of the Froelich museum.

Inventor Froelich took his engine (actually a tractor) to Waterloo to market it to businessmen there. A company was formed with him as president. He later left the company to pursue other interests but tractor experimentation continued. In 1912 the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company introduced the first “Waterloo Boy,” a kerosene-burning Model “R”. One hundred eighteen were sold that year, and a new Model “N”, which had two forward speeds, was marketed in 1915. In 1918 the Waterloo Company became part of the John Deere Company.

Today, the headquarters of the John Deere Company is in Moline, Illinois, and is one of the largest tractor-producing plants in America. 

Above is a Waterloo Boy tractor, a 1918 Model 2030, powered by kerosene, driven each year in the tractor parade at Carstens Farm Days, located at 32409 380^th St., Shelby, Iowa. Farm Days will be held on September 9 and 10, 2023.

The Froelich Fall Festival (Fall-der-All), where a model of John Froelich’s one-cylinder engine will be on display, will be held September 23-24, 2023.

See www.Froelichtractor.com.

Froelich, an unincorporated village in Clayton County, was named after German immigrant Henry Froelich, who arrived in 1847. Within a short time there was a blacksmith shop, sawmill, stockyards, and even a depot.

This is also where John Froelich (1849-1933), Henry’s son, invented a one-cylinder engine that signaled the beginning of the history of tractors. This amazing invention will be featured in the next blog. He received 14 known patents in his lifetime, which include the one-cylinder gasoline propelled engine, a water-cooling radiator for internal combustion engines, a mechanical corn picker, a dishwashing machine, and more. He was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991. 

The site of the Froelich Museum barn, visible from Highway 18, can’t be missed. The barn, built long after Henry died, has exhibits in the loft, and is available for rent for celebratory occasions. 

Behind the restored general store (see photo below) is the museum where a model of the engine John Froelich invented is on display, as well as an 1866 country school, passenger depot, freight depot, and warehouse.

The Froelich Fall Festival (Fall-der-All) wlll be held Sept. 23-24, 2023. 

Check the website www.Froelichtractor.com for more information. (2023 photos)

Pioneers made their way across Iowa, beginning in the 1830s. The lines on this map approximate the patterns of land acquisition during settlement as families moved from southeast to northwest between 1833 and 1870.

Pockets of settlement occurred in every part of the state. Norwegians arrived in the Decorah area and surrounding counties in the early 1830s. Immigrants from the Netherlands settled in Pella around 1846. German immigrants settled in many areas around 1850, and in northwest Marshall County brothers and sisters of several related families immigrated from Ireland between 1848 and 1850.

Barns were a necessity for these early pioneers, and their creativity and ingenuity was evident in their buildings. The Gehlen barn was constructed in 1839 by immigrants from Luxembourg who settled near St. Donatus. This Jackson County barn, believed to be the earliest one in Iowa, is located on Highway 52, minutes from both Dubuque and Bellevue.

Now the barn’s focus has changed. It hosts parties, family reunions, concerts, craft fairs, barn tours, and more, as well as a brewery. It is a great example of the continued use of a barn (2012 photo). See more of the Gehlen barn story in Iowa Barns yesterday and today, page 55.

(Map published by the Malcolm Price Laboratory School, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, 2003)